Human Rights Watch Accuses M23 Rebels of Massacre in the DRC

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused the M23 rebels of killing at least 140 people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) last month. The group warns that the actual estimated death toll may exceed 300, corroborating the United Nations’ report, which put the figure at 319. The incident comes amid the peace agreements that were being brokered by the US and Qatar to bring an end to the war. 

Despite accounts from eye-witnesses in the reports, who noted that the rebels “summarily executed” mainly Hutu residents in the Rutshuru area, the rebels have denied the allegations, referring to them as a “blatant misrepresentation of facts”. The alleged killings seem to have been carried out during an offensive against an armed Hutu Group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). 

According to the accounts of locals included in the report, the infamous group, M23, used machetes and opened fire on residents, with one man recounting how he witnessed the rebels kill his wife and four children aged nine months to 10 years. The locals indicated that the perpetrators threw some bodies into the river and instructed those who were alive to immediately bury the rest of the bodies, depriving the dead of a dignified burial. 

The HRW also accused members of the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) of participating in the killings, aligning with the UN’s report. The UN had released a report at the beginning of the month that the RDF had assisted the M23 in killing “at least 319 between 9 and 21 July in four villages in Rutshuru.”

While Rwanda has not responded to the HRW allegations, it vehemently denied the UN’s claims, addressing the report as “gratuitous” and “sensational allegations”, affirming its intentions to proceed with the peace talks. 

The killings cast further doubt on M23’s commitment to the peace deal signed in Qatar last month. The group had already stalled in attending the peace talks on Monday ahead of a final agreement with the DRC. Initially, M23 had insisted that they would not be in attendance until their members who were captured by the DRC were released in line with the Declaration of Principles signed in Qatar last month. However, following the response of both parties since the agreement, they have yet to declare a truce. 

The DRC has called on the rebels to relinquish their hold on Goma, but Bertrand Bisimwa, M23’s leader, insisted in a post on X that the declaration was “not a question of withdrawal but of mechanisms for empowering the state, enabling it to assume its prerogatives and obligations”. 

Although both the DRC and M23 have sent delegations to Qatar to finalise the peace agreement, the HRW’s findings underscore the lack of political will on both sides to end the conflict, despite ongoing peace efforts.